Road Trippin’ With Tom and Huck
by Mike Marino
“Hannibal has had a hard time of it ever since I can recollect, and I was “raised” there. First, it had me for a citizen, but I was too young then to really hurt the place.” (Mark Twain comment in a letter to the Alta California newspaper, dated April 16, 1867)
Think Twain, think Hannibal, Missouri. Think Twain, think Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, literature’s version of the Lost Boys. All of the various places that have been ingrained in literature and carved into the fertile imagination of young boys and girls since the publication of these two books, are based on real life characters and perhaps some exaggerated childhood exploits of Tom, Huck, Becky Thatcher and mostly of their creator, Mark Twain, or Sam Clemens.
Clemens was born in 1835 in Florida, Missouri but, his family soon moved to Hannibal where adventurous young boys could get into any amount of trouble they cared to. It was a time of superstition that involved graveyard remedies, ghosts, river pirates, escaped slaves and riverboats. Although young Clemens changed his name to Mark Twain and moved west to establish himself as a journalist and writer, his early writings were drawn from experience and the people he came into daily contact with in Hannibal, which would always have a gravitational influence on him, his writings. The stories were infectious, and in Hannibal today you can walk in the footsteps of Mark Twain’s own boyhood. Better yet, you can walk in the footsteps of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and sail on a raft of literary history throughout the town including the annual National Tom Sawyer Days Celebration.
Hannibal history has a distinct “Twain Factor” and you can get a full dose of it on your visit to the Mark Twain Boyhood Home, Museum and Garden. The Interpretive Center has interactive displays, and from there you can tour the house where young Sam Clemens was raised. It is also the literary location of Tom Sawyer’s home. There is a magnificent garden in the yard enclosed by a stone wall that was built in the 1930’s as part of a WPA works project. The gift shop is a tribute to all things Twain including souvenirs and of course, Mark Twain books!
The complex includes the boyhood home of Tom Blankenship, the prototype for Twain’s endearing character of that river rascal, Huck Finn. The Becky Thatcher home includes a well stocked gift shop with toys, souvenirs, books, and collectibles. This is the home of Laura Hawkins, the inspiration for Becky Thatcher who Tom Sawyer had a crush on. As you enter the Becky Thatcher home and gift shop, walk up the flight of stairs and turn right at the top. There you will find “Becky’s” bedroom set up in alit’s early 19th Century furnishings and a recorded history of the home and it’s place in Southern literature.
One final stop on the Boyhood Home Complex is the bronze Tom and Huck Statue at the foot of Cardiff Hill. You can pose for a photo and be one of Tom and Huck’s “robber gang.” Look beyond the statue, and you’ll see 244 uphill steps that lead to the historic wooden Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse, and be rewarded with a Birdseye view and sweeping panorama of the river and the town of Hannibal.
Get your spelunking shoes on and tour the Mark Twain Cave Complex. Tom and gang were lost in the cave and this is the cave where a young Sam Clemens and his friends used to fight imaginary pirates and other acts of childish daring do. The cave has guided tours, a visitor center, the obligatory gift shop (they are everywhere!) and two of the caves.
Want to camp it up at a cave? Pull your RV rig or pitch a tent at the Cave Complex Campground. They have 99 sites available with access to rest rooms, laundry, showers and a store for camping supplies and fire wood. Hikers will enjoy a trek to view wildlife that is abundant in the area, and unwind later in the day with a game of volleyball, basketball or horseshoes. If you bring the kids along, they can burn off energy at the campground playground. Now the real fun begins!
Across from the Cave Complex is the Sawyers Creek Fun Park with bumper boats, waterworks, miniature golf for all you mini-golf duffers, a cafe and the towns only all year round Christmas store with an abundant selection of Christmas ornaments, trees, and holiday decorations to give your Christmas a Mississippi River flair. The Mark Twain Riverboat has daily excursions including a one hour sightseeing cruise or a two-hour romantic sunset dinner cruise where you can wine and dine with all the nostalgic ambiance of an earlier slower paced era of style and class.
For over 50 years! Hannibal has been host to the annual National Tom Sawyer Days. Part of the festivities are the Tom and Becky Pageant where they choose that years “Tom and Becky” to represent the town. The young entrants walk around town in costume and in character to greet tourists and locals alike.
The celebration includes a fence painting contest, a frog jumping contest, mud volleyball, and a carnival. the Downtown is the center of activity with vendors, arts and crafts booths. music and other entertainment along with the Mighty Miss Raft Race! The festival is timed to coincide with the Fourth of July every year, so there is a parade and at night you can join thousands down on the banks of the river for the annual fireworks display that is quite spectacular.
Tom and Huck are waiting for you down by the river in Hannibal and remember, in the south there is a twang factor, but in Hannibal, it’s the Twain Factor!
If You Go:
♦ Shopping options include everything from souvenir shops to toy stores to bookstores. For the sweet tooth there is a popcorn and candy store and ice cream parlors to cool you down on a hot Hannibal day midsummer. Art is as abundant in Hannibal as levee’s on the river. The town has become an artists haven and colony with numerous galleries and studios to tour and visit.
♦ You can mom and pop it for lodging, or stay at one of the chain motels, bed and breakfasts or rough it river style at campgrounds to accommodate the RV pioneer or the tent camper who prefers a more rustic approach to enjoying the great outdoors.
♦ For more information on Hannibal, Missouri, visit the website at www.visithannibal.com
Photo credits:
Mark Twain’s boyhood home by Andrew Balet / CC BY-SA
Mark Twain portrait by A.F. Bradley, New York / Public domain
Huckleberry Finn book cover by E. W. Kemble (1861–1933) – illustrator / Public domain
The Twain House first floor library by Jack E. Boucher, Photographer / Public domain
About the author:
Mike Marino is a freelance writer and columnist for numerous publications in North America and Europe. He also worked as journalist and managing editor of two newspapers in the Pacific Northwest, and the eight specialty publications produced each year. He writes as a columnist and/or contributor to numerous magazines in the US, Canada and Europe. www.angelfire.com/mi2/sfroad/page1022.html
San Francisco never ceases to entertain. The city is diverse, exciting and cosmopolitan. No matter how many times you visit, there is always something new to see. But the city hasn’t always been this refined. Between 1849 and 1917, the city enjoyed a raucous reputation known as “the Barbary Coast” period. The Barbary Coast, the original red light district, acquired its name around 1860 from the coast of North Africa where Arab pirates attacked Mediterranean ships.
Labor was scarce as passengers and crew jumped ship to seek their fortune. This problem was alleviated with the practice of shanghaiing – signing up sailors by coercion. Prospective sailors, no experience required, were slipped a “Mickey Finn” (opium) in their drink then dropped down a trap door in the saloon floor. This may be where the expression “down the hatch” originated. Upon awakening, they would find themselves unwilling crew members on an outbound ship destined for a two year tour.
Those who were not shanghaied often frequented the local dance halls. Exit the Old Ship Saloon and walk approximately three blocks to the Hippodrome. Now an art supply store, the sidewalls of the entrance are still graced with the original white bas-reliefs of dancing nude nymphs. Superficially this establishment catered to lonely men but it also housed a secret tunnel used for smuggling goods and people. Descend the stairs into the basement and face the wall at the front of building. In the far right corner you find the entrance to a now walled-off tunnel approximately 15 feet long with 10 foot high arched ceiling.
A history of more vice follows in Chinatown’s Ross Alley (“the Street of the Gamblers”). Walking along, you find many of the doors in the alleyway covered by metal gates. Any one of these doorways potentially leads to a former gambling or opium den. While nothing from this time is clearly visible, it is not difficult to imagine men and women sprawled out in a drowsy or completely overcome condition. While you proceed through the alley, stop by the Golden Gate Fortune Cookies factory for a free sample and see how that product is made.
The park, designed by the famous Olmstead brothers of New York City’s Central Park fame, combines both the best of man’s landscaping ideas with Mother Nature’s unspoiled beauty. The area is prefaced by basalt rock formations jutting out everywhere. In the midst of the unspoiled habitat, my eyes were captivated by a stone bridge built in the 1930s. Even on a warm, sunny afternoon with the public out hiking, biking, or admiring one of the six gardens (including for lilacs and roses), I felt a real sense of calmness and peace in a place that once was a zoo, until the hard times of the Great Depression caused its closure. At the north central end of the park, one can still see remnants of the bear’s habitat, as just behind the Park Bench Café resides a basalt rock formation that has iron bars sticking out of it.
Tree-lined avenues to walk on are especially welcome during a balmy morning, which the Browne’s Addition provided for me. About a five-minute drive west of downtown, it was established in 1883, making it one of Washington State’s oldest neighborhoods whose homes include a mix of small and large dwellings and an array of 1970s and 1980s apartment complexes.
The spacious Campbell House, one of the inspired designs of architect Kirtland Cutter, offers tours. On the first and second floor, I got to view the family’s living quarters and Campbell’s personal office space. Guests get to see what life was life for the servants, who worked primarily in the basement. Here, 19th century lighting has been recreated (using old Thomas Edison reproduction light bulbs) to show how little light Campbell’s staff had while doing the laundry and other chores, which explains why there are windows in the basement for extra lighting. The property’s carriage house has plenty of exhibits that go over the history of the family and the late 19th and early 20th century times in Spokane. As big and dated as the house is, there’s been no reported haunting, even though it’s a bit creepy to explore. I took lots of pictures, and found no traces of orbs or ghosts.
I took another tour of another famous Browne’s Addition house, The Roberts Mansion, also located on 1st Ave. It’s an 1889 Queen Anne Victorian home that serves as a bed and breakfast. The interior has been restored to reflect earlier times, but does offer guests the creature comforts of internet access and plasma TVs. I found the most notable aspect of the property in its backyard. It contains a “Secret Garden,” which is easily missed by guests because large shrubs obscure it, but once inside, it offered me a peaceful setting to rest in while surrounded by trees and other plant life. No wonder this place is used to host intimate gatherings.
Dating back to the late 1800s, the South Perry District offered me a more rugged and vibrant city experience than the historic tranquility of the above two neighborhoods. It has blue collar roots, for its first businesses included a couple of lumberyards and a butcher shop. The most conspicuous landmark is located on the main drag of South Perry Street. It’s a Dutch windmill that originally housed a bakery, but has since had many businesses in it. Currently, there’s a health food and herbal store there, where I got some real black licorice made out of licorice root extract.
I walked over the waterlogged ground to the nine slave cabins that were in the front yard. The cabins are made from brick, which is incredibly unusual for the time because most were made out of wood. Visitors would have seen these cabins first before the main house, and the reasoning was that if the slave cabins were made from brick, you knew you were entering a wealthy plantation. Each cabin would have housed between 6-12 people, mainly house slaves as the field slaves would have lived in wooden cabins in the fields. (There was a hierarchy among the enslaved, and you were considered ‘higher up’ on the scale if you worked in the house.)
In each cabin, there was a small exhibition on the life of a slave and what happened to them after the Civil War. Quotes by Frederick Douglass, the fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and former slave Harriet Tubman adorned the walls. Tubman, my personal heroine, declared “there is either liberty or death, and if I can’t have one, I will have the other.” Standing in those slave cabins was the most surreal moment of my life so far. I had read about slavery for five years, imagined what life must have been like for a slave living in the heart of South Carolina, or in the humidity of Louisiana, but nothing came close to standing in that cabin, feeling the marks of fingerprints on the walls, and looking out of the window to stare at the alley of oak trees. Feeling the dust beneath my feet and staring at the broken pieces of glass, animal bone and metal. What would the enslaved have experienced within these walls? Loss and sacrifice. Heartbreak and death. Love and defiance. Survival. These slave cabins bridge the gap between two completely different worlds. We may never be able to recover the memories or the stories that scream to be heard, but the cabins stand as strong and silent testimony to those that lived and worked here. It was an incredibly moving experience, and one that I shall never forget.
After the presentation I rushed to the ‘Big House’ for my tour, an elegant home that is still lived in. Unfortunately, you were not allowed to take photographs, and the tour was confined to the library, the study and the dining room. Little was mentioned about the role of the slaves within the house, but the tour was interesting nonetheless. It was beautiful, although not as grand as some of the plantations you will find in Louisiana. Perhaps that is a good thing, depending on your taste. And so concluded my powerful trip to Boone Hall. I made my way to the car park, which now resembled a small river, and carefully drove down the alley of oak trees, this time in the sunshine. The best destinations are those that stir the soul, pull at the heartstrings or blow us away with their beauty. For me, Boone Hall managed to do all three.
As I walked through the downtown area, I couldn’t help but notice just how much brick, stone, and terra cotta dominated the exteriors of the buildings. This came about after the fire in 1889, which destroyed 32 blocks. One of the city’s landmarks, Steam Plant Square, once provided much of the steam heat and electrical power for the city from 1916-1986, then it would remained neglected for ten years. To make a long story short, the building has been restored with some of its original infrastructure in tact that helps make the existing businesses and offices a unique place to explore or work in.
But I also savored some great-tasting beer and fish inside the landmark at the Stacks at Steam Plant. It has an intimate atmosphere dominated by an industrial brown and black motif. I dined amidst the factory’s old fixtures. The restaurant features a full menu of seafood, beef, chicken, and pasta dishes and brews its own beer, including one uniquely-flavored and really smooth tasting Double Stack Stout, which contains chocolate, vanilla, and espresso. I highly recommend the Smoked Steelhead, which has a taste to die for, as the fish was smoked over alder wood and brined in the restaurant’s Highland and Scottish ale and spices.
As a travel writer, a hotel is generally the first and last place I visit during a stay in a city. I’m more concerned about its functionality than anything else. Yet I couldn’t appreciate Spokane’s history without appreciating the history of a hotel that helped put Spokane on the map, The Davenport Hotel.
I’m impressed with Art Deco design, and in the heart of downtown an old movie house that originally showed 20th Century Fox pictures has become one of the city’s cultural meccas. The Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox was first opened in 1931, and what drew people there weren’t only the feature films, but the fact that it got to be the first place in town to get air conditioning, a must-see for Spokane’s curious locals. After it was closed down in 2000 during its bargain-movie-showing period, the long road to restoring it to its Art Deco glory would begin. Seven years and $31 million later, the dream came to pass. I was especially impressed with the auditorium, which holds 1,620-1,720 people and has green and pink stripes on the walls. The lobby exudes tropical designs on blue and gold walls. It took considerable time to remove the thick layers of red paint that dominated those days of cheap second-run flicks.
